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Saturday, January 31, 2015

As our hobby gets older, so do many of the people who created it. Many simply die, but others have lingering health problems. Jeff Perren didn't contribute much to D&D directly, but he did co-write the Chainmail rules with EGG which led to D&D.

He's had to have a leg amputated but is fortunate enough to have a daughter willing to take him in. However, they need a stair lift and are running a GoFundMe to help pay for it.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

The whole product should be out in late February, but there's a preview up on RPGNow with stats on everyone's favorite bat-toad god and his followers, the Voormis and Formless Spawn, all written by James Mishler.

Quite a bit tougher (275 hp and 28 HD) than the "official" Labyrinth Lord version in Realms of Chaos (80 hp and 14 HD).

Ran into him once. Had to use a portable hole and bag of holding to send him away.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

The Temple of Modiboga is a small temple crawl adventure from Geoff Dale, best known for his classic Judges Guild module Inferno (which he has updated/continued).

While it is for his retro-clone, Portal to Adventure, it's pretty much standard OSR stuff, other than some slightly different terminology. Not sure how his Armor Class works, as it seems to range from 6 to 30, but it seems to use standard monsters, so not a real problem.

I plan on finishing most of the writing before launching a Kickstarter.
Crowd funding will be necessary to commission new art. Since a good
portion of the writing has already been accomplished, I’m hoping to
reach this stage by late spring/early summer.

Saturday, January 24, 2015

An all-new adventure for Metamorphosis Alpha, the first sci-fi RPG created by James M. Ward in 1976!
The Knower of All Things has been kidnapped! Mysterious agents have
abducted the village shaman in the dead of night, leaving a hideous
trail in their wake. Now it is up to the bravest and strongest members
of the tribe to rescue the shaman before he falls victim to his captors’
nefarious plans. Before their journey is through, the village heroes
will find themselves in an undreamt-of place, battling faceless foes. Is
your mutant up to the challenge?
This adventure module is designed for Metamorphosis Alpha first
edition, as originally published in 1976 and re-published by Goodman
Games in 2014

Grandpappy Cromdar's Whizbang Zoo!is a module from David Lewis Johnson, who is perhaps best known as an artist, including some of the art that Kevin Crawford (Sine Nomine) put into the public domain after his successful kickstarters for Scarlet Heroes and Spears of the Dawn. You've probably seen a treasure chest he drew — it's been used in a number of OSR products (including one of mine).

As you might guess by the name, it's something of a gonzo style product. The zoo in question is literally a modern day sort of zoo, complete with many modern items, albeit a trashy zoo meant for tourists and that has apparently broken down, Westworld or Jurassic Park style. So it's perhaps not suited for your usual D&D game, even though it's statted for it (no specific system, but the armor class starts at 9). Seems almost like it's best suited for something like Mutant Future or possibly Starships & Spacemen 2e, though the tech level is modern, not futurisitc.Similarly, the new monsters (22 of them) are mostly chimerical sorts of mutant animals. For instance, the Hazbroca seems to be part cobra, part orca or at least dolphin. The floppelope is part walrus, part giraffe, and part peacock. The muggerbeak is part gorrila, part turkey. The quincy raptor is part lynx, part kangaroo. Not all, though. Some are alien creatures, though most seemingly have some similarity to an Earth animal. Besides the usual stats you also get what they smell and sound like, as well as their hobbies and turn-offs.

Rules

Inferno Bestiary, Second Edition- From the guy who made the Inferno module for Judges Guild back in the day comes 200 more infernal (and angelic) monsters. It's meant for his own retro-clone, so not quite identical, but usable in most OSR games without too much trouble. 139 pages, $17.75

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

At least it's out at RPGNow/DTRPG. Although the quality depends a lot of the author, in general, I am a huge fan of this series, and they are pretty much the only real ongoing products for OSRIC/1e.

The Palace Beyond is an OSRIC(tm) module designed for 4-6 adventurers of levels 6-9.

The
Palace Beyond is ancient, and the race that built it is long gone. The
palace exists on many levels of reality, and it is said it is everywhere
and nowhere at once. It connects different parts of the world: it is
possible to walk through a magic portal, into one of the palace’s
corridors, turn around a corner, and then walk through another portal to
end up in a far away land. But now the palace is deserted, and the
magic that made it possible is slowly crumbling. Its pocket dimension is
collapsing, and large sections of the palace have already fallen into
Nothingness.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

The Warlord's Vault is the 6th in the Dungeons of Dazegoneby line of modules from Creation's Edge Games, meant for a party of 6th to 8th level characters. The modules are for Swords & Wizardry (a Original D&D retro-clone) and are meant to mimic the modules TSR put out, at least in the general sense. They are more like mini-modules, to run for a single session, in this case 13 pages total, including map & credits page.

The setup is a bit non-traditional, being almost like a game show. The warlord of the title was a great adventurer and when he died, a friend created a tomb to serve as a proving ground to see who deserved his magical gear.

In order to reach his tomb, and more importantly, his gear, the PCs have to knock down 7 prismatic walls, essentially similar to the prismatic sphere spell. To take down each wall, you need to either cast the spell that counters it (which is probably not an option for the PCs, since most are higher level than this module) or use a corresponding prismatic key, which are found in various parts of the dungeon.

Sunday, January 11, 2015

My second attempt at making a module. This time a bit longer, 25 rooms, and for character levels 7th to 10th. I ran it with 7th, but that's using 1e rules and with pretty good gear (comparable to the stuff in GDQ).

As I didn't have any suitable color cover art, I took a B&W Dore illustration and colored it to look somewhat like the monochrome modules. I think it looks pretty neat.

This supplement is for any DM who needs a town, and needs a town fast!
Designed to be compatible with any fantasy role-playing game system,
Adventures In Highwold is the perfect starting point for any campaign.
Includes two full colour maps, a table of random encounters, area
descriptions, fearsome foes and numerous adventure seeds for exciting
adventures ahead.

The Lost City of Barakus - Perhaps the only reasonably priced Frog God Games adventure, this is an adaption of a pretty nice d20 site based adventure that includes a large dungeon complex, a city, and a wilderness area (the real highlight). The conversion is a little odd in places, but not too bad. 143 pages, $19.99

The Sword of Air - 5 new adventures from Frog God Games set in the Lost Lands. 432 pages, $39.99

Misc

Chenel -Map - This was originally the map some came up with for a city in Greyhawk, now it's been renamed. $4.99

Pyramid of the Lost King is a decentralized sandbox adventure centering
around an area of the Desert known as the Narrows. The Narrows is a
section of desert that is divided into a northern and southern half by a
massive slab of sandstone over 200 miles wide and 300 feet in height.
The only way (aside from walking around) past this slab of rock is
through the narrow canyon the area gets its name form. The Narrows and
the desert around it have become a hot bed of activity as the merchant
guilds have come to rely on it for their caravans to the Last Lands.
However, the desert around the Narrows is still unexplored and dangers,
both ancient and new, encroach.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

Honestly, I always thought the Grimtooth books were overkill, more something to read and to enjoy the excellent illustrations rather than something to seriously use in a dungeon. But at $35 for a 460 page print copy, it's a really good deal however you use it. (Hell, for a lot of Kickstarters, at least the batrachian kind, you can't even get a PDF for $35)

The Sword of Three Parts - This is a statless dungeon crawl, but apparently originally designed for AD&D 2e. Mostly features puzzles though. Pay What You Want, 23 (single) pages

Rules

Cultist - Barrel Rider is back with their new classes for Labyrinth Lord, this time a Lovecraftian style cultist. $1.

Misc

47 Gods & Heroes For Your Campaign World - If one of them isn't named Fred, I'll be disappointed. $1, 19 pagesDelve! Zine Issue 2 - Delve! is a zine dedicated to
exploring the weird fantasy side of Old School Gaming. Operating
heavily under the influences of the oft proclaimed Appendix N authors,
Delve! also explores other influences such as comics luminaries Jack
Kirby, Mike Mignola, Steve Ditko and more as well as 1950's-1970's
horror/sci-fi/fantasy film, and a dash of old school punk rock. $3.99, 48 pages. Had me until "old school punk rock". Ugh, that's more pretentious than a Woody Allen movie.

Within lies a taste of the world of Fantasy before it was clipped and
trimmed and placed in a neat box. Animators and Musketeers delve dank
dungeons teeming with Nosferrogu and Flamingodiles, where mutant tribes
battle coldly calculating Luminites with poisoned spears and blazing
lasers. Shitoth the Spider Daemon and Bitlinktaknerekt the Hell Gnome
stalk their deadly lairs. The mummified head of the ancient sorcerer
TuattaTan berates you for your obesity. Genres mix and epochs mingle,
arcanotech and dinosaurs, Thundarr meets Cthulhu! Dreams coalesce and
nightmares take on reality. What is this glorious mess?! It’s WIZARDS
MUTANTS LASER PISTOLS! the fanzine of old school weirdness

About This Site

As a long time D&D fan who was lured back and then disappointed by the 5e announcement, I was thrilled to discover there was a whole bunch of people making products for old school versions of the game, either adventures and sourcebooks, or variations of the old rules.

But there was little in the way of news about new products, other than scattered comments on various message boards and sometimes not even that. So I thought I'd collect all the news I could find, as well as write the occasional review.

If you happen to have any news pertaining to OSR products, drop me a line at trancejeremy at yahoo.com